Sunday, January 23, 2011

Battle Report: SandWyrm vs. CaulynDarr

by SandWyrm

Mrs. SandWyrm and I have been taking a ballroom dancing class on Wednesdays, so my gaming has been pushed into the weekend for a few weeks now. Which means that by Saturday I'm pretty stir-crazy and looking for something to smash.

So I headed over to G2D4, hoping to kick Sangy's Space Puppies around, but he didn't show. Awe. But CaulynDarr was there with his Ultramarines, so I threw down against his blue men with the Tallarn 13th.

This is my current test list for the NOVA Open in August. I've been pretty happy with it's performance so far. Let's see how it does today...

Setup

The game is Capture and Control with a Pitched Battle Deployment.

My objective is just in front of the building in the middle of my board edge, while CaulynDarr's objective is over on his left flank.

I roll first turn and setup ready to pounce on his objective. The Demo Vets are loaded in the Vendettas and ready to alpha-strike across the table. The Stormtroopers are outflanking.

CaulynDarr makes an armor-huddle over next to his objective. His Predator is set up in the center trees, with the Librarian + Command Squad in the Heavy Bolter Razorback behind it. The Speeders and Rifleman Dreds deploy on his right to tempt away my outflanking Stormtroopers.

Now we're ready for the pre-game moves...

Shrike and his Assault Terminator bodyguard infiltrate in front of the armor huddle. Nice. No melta bomb alpha-strikes for me today.

I move the Vendettas up, even though I won't be able to assault his tanks. I want to keep him on his side of the table as long as possible, and the Demo Vets are as much a shield as a sword.

Turn 1

Out come the Demo Vets in blocking mode.

On my far-right, I advance a Demolisher and it's accompanying Vet Squad.

The Vendettas move back a bit and turn to face the Speeders and the Dreds.

Speeder go boom!

The other Vendetta stuns a Dred.

The Demolisher gets a hit on the Terminators and kills one. The Chimera gets lucky and kills a Rhino with it's multi-laser.

Over to the left a bit, the other Demolisher hits too, but the Termies all make their Invulnerable Saves. The Demo Vets lob a charge and use their flamers, but only kill one more.

The left-most Demo Vet unit tries to assault the Predator, but the range is 6.1 inches, so I don't even try the difficult terrain roll. No big deal.

Out comes the Librarian's squad to smite me.

Shrike and the termies move up too.

Pop goes the Vendetta. Lucky speeder. :)

CaulynDarr does the smart thing and tries to kill off my Command Squad. You'd be surprised how many people don't go after it. He doesn't finish them off, but he does manage to kill the Astropath, which will hurt my outflanking ability.

Charge! The Demo Vet squad on the left gets wiped out, while the one on the right runs. But they're still over half strength.

On the far right, my Chimera gets shaken by a missile.

Turn 2

My running squad rallies and kills a Terminator.

Despite the loss of my Astropath, both Stormtrooper units come on. The first comes in on the right, killing 5 Marines from the squad that lost their transport.

The other Stormy squad rolls a 5, letting me choose where to come in. I ponder it for a bit and decide that the Dreds really do need to die. I fire their Chimera's multi-laser at the back of one to no effect, and wreck the other with my meltas.

The Tac squad I mangled runs off the table. Yay!

CaulynDarr's Terminators line up on my Demolisher, while Shrike jumps over my Demo Vet squad to attack it from the rear.

And the Razorbacks move up.

The one-armed Dred (it fell off before the game) walks to the side of the Stormtrooper Chimera and wrecks it.

While on the right the Multi-Melta bike and Tac Squad missile launcher only immobilize my Stormy Chimera. CaulynDarr is forced to perforate it with the Predator, wrecking it. After the dust settles, only a lone melta Stormtrooper is left alive.

Turn 3

On his turn CaulynDarr manages to kill the Demo Vet Squad and turn my left Demolisher into a weaponless, immobilized hulk.

I retaliate by killing Shrike with Vet Meltas and killing 3 of the Marines in the Librarian's squad with the surviving Vendetta.

Over on the far-right, my lone Stormtrooper sticks his melta up a Rhino's tailpipe and... stuns it. Gee, thanks buddy. The Demolisher scores a hit and immobilizes the Rhino too. I try and kill the attack bike with my Chimera's multi-laser, but he makes all 3 of his saves.

Over on the far-left, my Stormies finish off the last Dred.

The Heavy Bolter Razorback dies to multi-laser fire.

During his turn, CaulynDarr shoots with the Pred and the Razorbacks, but hits with nothing.

Turn 4

The Stormies that killed the Dred hoof-it for the center of the table. They should reach the Pred in two turns.

The Librarian moves up towards my objective, but has to go to ground to survive all the fire coming his way. Impressively, he makes all 4 of his cover saves versus my Plasma Guns.

My Vendetta has side shots on CaulynDarr's Predator, but he makes both of his cover saves. The 2 surviving TH/SS termies attack the nearest Melta Vet Chimera, wrecking it.

There's an attack bike in the way on my far-right, but the Demolisher scoots around it and pops off a shot at the Pred, missing it. Which sucks because I can't move my troops up with it covering the objective.

The attack bike on the far-right eats meltas and dies.

One of the last 2 TH/SS Termies goes down to melta fire.

On his turn, CaulynDarr gives up on the win and decides to play for a draw. He moves both of his Las/Plas Razorbacks back towards his objective to fend off my Demolisher and Chimera on the far right.

The last TH/SS Terminator assaults the Melta Vet squad in front of it and goes down before it can attack. Go Guard!!!

Turn 5

Time to contest the objective!

My Vendetta moves flat-out and parks itself right next to CaulynDarr's objective. I shoot some stuff, but only kill a few infantry.

CaulynDarr does what he can to fend me off, assaulting my Demolisher and Chimera. But he's not rolling well. He knocks the turret off the Demolisher and stuns the Melta Vets.

He fires a combi-melta at the Vendetta, but misses. Cursing, he shoots the Predator at the Vendetta, but fails to penetrate it.

The Librarian gets 4 more plasma gun wounds, but this time he fails 2 of them. Buh-Bye!

That't the end of turn 5. I roll a die and it comes up "1". Game over. The Tallarns win 1-0.

Conclusions

I like this list a lot. It has all the tools I need to push someone up against the back of the table and stick a gun in their mouth. :)

As for CaulynDarr's list. I think the Heavy Bolters that he took on the Pred and one Razorback hurt him. As did the single combi-meltas in his Tac Squads. Another melta gun or two could really have helped in the final turn.

Deployment-wise, I like how he shut down my alpha strike and how he baited my outflankers. But I think he played it too defensively after that.

Good game though. It's the most enjoyable one I've had in the last few weeks.

14 comments:

Great batrep, great read...as always. Thanks for sharing. Good lists on both sides, that MM bike could have done with a friend...shame the Razorback with Libby came with Heavy Bolters...and whilst I'm a big advocate of AutoLas Preds for BA...not sure about it for Vanilla...very static to get best from them, despite their excellent range... not sure what I'd suggest instead though lol...

The 3x Melta 1x flamer combo on the CCS is awesome. I've been doing that with all my command squads for the last few games. It gives them some nice flexibility and even helps a little with wound allocation.

Haha it started that way for me too, but I found that I actually used that flamer a heck of a lot. The best thing is that it turns the depressing "damn my chimera got popped by close combat troops" scenario into a hilarious barbecue roast. Especially vs highly flammable troops like Orks and Nids (who, let's face it, are the most likely culprits).

I found shooting vehicles with 3 meltas tend to do as well as 4 and the flamer picks up the slack against most troops. In general it gives the CCS a role it wouldn't otherwise be able to fill.

I need to buy a few new models to get my SM 2000 point list just right, but I've been too focused on my Eldar and Tau to give them any attention. Plus I've improved my painting and modeling a bit since I built my Ultras, and it's a hard choice whether to buy something new and paint it to my best abilities, or to just make it match.

Seriously, it looks good. Not as good as (ahem) the Tallarn XII (The painted part), but definitely well above tabletop standard.

The only changes I'd make would be putting Aegis Defense Line guns on the Dreds (they look better), and swapping in Lascannons on your HB Razorback and Predator. Maybe a Melta in each Tac Squad too, to replace the flamers. If you need points, then lose the attack bike to get them.